Media miss the mark

Since the beginning of the 1990s talk radio Republican revolution started by Rush Limbaugh, media bias has been a leading issue among conservatives. Limbaugh coined the phrase “drive-by media,” Sarah Palin called the major papers and network news shows “lamestream media,” and Bernie Goldberg and Ann Coulter have made a fortune ripping the liberal media with book after book. After the early 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, the news shows of MSNBC and CNN continued to pound into the heads of the American people that Martin was the victim of a racial-profiling Zimmerman, only for evidence to be pushed to the front that in fact Zimmerman was not the racist monster they painted him as. Now we have the Ferguson, Missouri, situation with Gov. Jay Nixon, D, in between a rock and a hard place, perpetuated by media trying to bring justice before all the facts were placed before them.

On Aug. 9, Ferguson officer Darren Wilson shot 18-year-old Michael Brown six times. The original response by the community of Ferguson was that of protest. Black people throughout the community and outside communities marched the streets in protest of what appeared to be another Trayvon Martin-esque scenario. The media portrayed Ferguson as a racist hotbed ready to burst.

Joe Costephens, a white pastor of Passage Community Church, an interracial church in Florissant, Missouri, commented on the uniqueness of this situation to World Net Daily: “The Ferguson you see on the national news is different from the Ferguson I know.” The pastor went on to add, “There’s an emphasis on families in Ferguson, and on community. We are definitely an interracial community, and I’m proud to minister to an interracial congregation.” “While things were going crazy with the Michael Brown shooting on Sunday, we had a pool party in my neighborhood, and it was half-white and half-black,” he said. “It was a beautiful thing, families loving one another, both races, with a sense of community.

Did you see that on the nightly news? No. Why? Because the media miss the mark when it comes to certain types of politically charged reporting. Most conservatives understand and accept that President Barack Obama’s golf game will be less criticized than George W. Bush’s, and the media are pretty fair to politicians caught in sexual affairs; but when it comes to racial issues, the media take the side of a black victim without hesitation or investigation. Right now evidence and eye witness accounts are reporting that Brown attacked Wilson tried to strip him of his gun, and the officer decided to end the young man’s life to protect himself. While this all plays out as a tragedy, the media refuse to acknowledge how unfair they are to the police concerning the racial element of this case.

While flipping through the major 24-hour news stations, one would think that Brown innocently walked by and was repeatedly shot. But once Fox News was able to report that, “Wilson suffered severe facial injuries, including an eye socket fracture, and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun,” other media outlets starting packing up and getting out of Dodge. Seems there’s no story if the police officer is the victim.

Why do the media seem so bent on portraying only one side of the story and quietly escape into the shadows after facts enter the equation? Bernie Goldberg, a popular media commentator, argues that liberal bias is only half the equation: “I believe the answer is that many liberals just haven’t evolved on race the way the rest of the country has. Their inclination is to perpetually view race relations through the lens of the 1960s […] and not the 21st century.” We see what we want to see.

The other half of liberal bias is pure adrenaline. “In the United States of Entertainment there is no greater sin than to bore the audience.” And Cop Kills Minority is not a boring headline.

My hope is that the media will cool down after this and remember they serve us all, not just who they feel get the raw end of the stick in the land of the free.